Letters

The August 30 letter from Jim Earp, headed “Vedder Knew Better,” contains quite a misrepresentation. Talking about recording quality he said, “Local college radio stations that focus on old jazz and blues formats...will readily play sonically subpar, 80-year-old vinyl.” That calls for a few comments.

While vinyl recordings were indeed introduced in 1931 by RCA, that was for limited-edition classical 78s and was not used for jazz or blues. Shellac was the common material from that time until 1948 when LP (long play) records were introduced and were pressed on vinyl.

Next, we have two publicly broadcasted local college radio stations — and only one of those features jazz and blues. Was there some reason Mr. Earp didn’t want to identify KSDS, 88.3?

Lastly, his focus was basically on recording quality. Other than one “old timey” music program, recordings played at KSDS are either from digital sources or vinyl LPs. The CDs may be either modern recordings, or remasters/reissues of older recordings, including some from the 1930s and ’40s shellac-78 era. The remastering of those older recordings are done with various digital tools to improve sonic quality. As for the vinyl LPs, many of us believe they can provide superior sonics to CDs, so long as they are in good condition, by offering more warmth and depth to the music.

Timvia voicemail

Fruit Contact

I would like some contact information for the “Made in San Diego” fruit tree guys (cover story, August 23). I want to call them and ask them about a special fruit I saw in the article.

Rafael Carillovia voicemail

The San Diego California Rare Fruit Growers San Diego Chapter website is crfgsandiego.org. North San Diego County California Rare Fruit Growers website is found at nc.crfgsandiego.org — Editor

I remember my first job in 1977. The break room had a community bulletin board where employees were always posting comics that had been cut out of newspapers and magazines. Today that community bulletin board is called Facebook.

Early last year an acquaintance posted a comic on a real estate site, which specifically didn’t allow copyrighted materials without permission and attribution. When I contacted the poster, she said she had bought the comic at iStockPhoto. I checked and sure enough, there it was.

However, I still didn’t believe that the owner would sell his work to iStockPhoto since I knew his work was syndicated.

I contacted iStockPhoto and the copyright owner. iStockPhoto said they had a statement of copyright ownership on file whereas the copyright owner said he had never sold his work to iStockPhoto. Turns out that a contributor to iStockPhoto had confiscated the work and sold it to iStockPhoto. A couple of weeks later I noticed that the work was no longer available.

The funny thing is that copyright ownership in comics is always indicated in one of the panes or just outside the frame line. Sometimes it’s small and hidden, sometimes it looks like part of the drawing itself. The whole situation is going to get worse before it gets better because Facebook and others don’t care.

Kudos to the Reader and to Lorena Mancilla for helping us understand what our neighbors are up against in their fight for a just and democratic political system. I hope Yonder Lies It becomes a regular feature of the Reader. You also are to be commended for looking across the border in your food and entertainment sections through articles by Ed Bedford, Ian Pike, and others.

Unfortunately, most people these days think only of drugs and violence when Mexico is mentioned. This attitude, fueled by media hysteria, has distorted the facts about safety in Tijuana and, incidentally, nearly killed the tourist economy there. Border traffic appears to be mostly a one-way affair now.

Our area is a megalopolis of five-million people — three million on this side of the border; two million on the other. We on this side should not be so insular in our thinking. The United States and Mexico are up against huge problems. We need to face our difficulties as friends, not adversaries. Informative articles like Yonder Lies It are a step in the right direction.

Larry Whittakervia email

Biased Innuendos

Yonder Lies It (August 16) is full of innuendos, and is clearly biased against President Elect Enrique Peña Nieto. Since he won by millions of votes, the stories going around have to mention millions of forged documents, like “two million duplicated ballots were found in Oaxaca,” that no other paper in Mexico has mentioned.

The movement #132 was a premeditated attack against him. The universities were put to shame with such disrespecting behavior. They acted empowered by their number like bullies do. The convenience of being able to post anything on YouTube as it was happening shows them as bullies too. As a guest, [Nieto] should have been treated with respect. Taking responsibility for acts committed by others does not mean he did it, nor condone it. Clearly, not a single one of these students was listening. They were busy shouting insulting things to him and waiting for the moment to attack.

The votes from green-card holders that crossed the border to vote for Manuel Lopez Perdedor should be invalidated, because these people emigrated here to work and have the life that Mexico did not provide for them. They should learn English and fulfill the obligation of becoming naturalized U.S. citizens to be able to vote here in the country that is giving them a better life, and not participate in the one they left, and that they do not know how things are anymore unless they receive misinformation from people like Trujillo.

The south-of-the-border mentality is monkey-see, monkey-do. The #132 movement is the version of the Tea Party movement in this country. When the Occupy Movement was started in the United States, the movement was copied south of the border too. In this country we have many political parties and only two of those are always in power and no one seems to be bothered by it, or call it a dictatorship or corrupted system like Trujillo calls it.